August 10, 2016

In the three novels I've read in Valerie
Wesley Wilson's Tamara Hayle series, memories of her dead brother Johnny haunts
Tamara. She struggles with forgiving him for committing suicide when she was in
her teens. In the fourth novel, "No
Hiding Place" she feels she must pay a debt she considers he owes to a
man whom he mentored when the man was a boy.

Tamara reluctantly takes a murder case when Bessie Raymond
visits her office and asks her to find out who killed her son Shawn Raymond.
Tamara tries to explain that solving murders is the job of the police. Bessie
refuses to take no for an answer and asks how much it’ll cost for two weeks of
work on the case.

As the interview progresses, Tamara
recognizes Miss Raymond who had lived in the same neighborhood as her family.
The recognition triggers a memory of the young boy her brother Johnny mentored
as part of “Project Touch and Change.” That young boy was Shawn Raymond. The
relationship ended when Johnny killed himself. Not only did his death leave Tamara
without a big brother, it also left the young boy without a mentor. She feels
Johnny failed her and the young boy. Had he lived maybe Shawn Raymond would
have had a better life and still be alive. She feels Johnny owes a debt to
Bessie because in committing suicide he failed her son. She takes the case
because Johnny “had always been a man who paid his debts” and now she must pay
the debt for him. Besides, she needs the money.

Bessie admits Shawn Raymond was a drug
dealer and gunrunner. From the police investigator, Tamara learns Shawn was
shoot through the heart with a .38, and the gun hasn’t been found. The investigator
suspects a rival might have killed him.

Bessie also said Shawn fathered two
children. One is a 13-year-old boy named Rayshawn Rudell whose mother is Viola
Rudell, a small woman with a reputation for violence. The other is a baby boy
whose mother is Gina Lennox, one of the twin daughters of retired policeman Gus
Lennox.

As Tamara continues what she considers to
be a futile investigation, she gets involved with the Lennoxs, a middle class black
family that remained in the South Ward when other black residents left. Gus is
a local celebrity. He was the first black policeman to go undercover. He gained
his reputation of as a good, tough policeman after bringing down the Prince
Street Gang while working undercover. He has two brothers, Zeke, who spent time
in jail, and the youngest Ben, with whom Tamara had an affair after she
divorced her husband DeWayne. The two remaining relatives are his wife Mattie
and his twin daughters Gina and Lena.

Shawn had an affair with both daughters.
Lena, the rebellious daughter, moved on after introducing her sister Gina to
Shawn. Shawn abused Gina and forced her to perform horrific and humiliating
sexual acts. Since the Lennoxs hated Shawn and prevented Bessie from seeing her
grandbaby, Augustus Lennox Raymond, Tamara considered all members of the family
suspects, including mousy Gina. Viola Rudell is a suspect because she felt
Shawn betrayed her when he took up with the Lennox sisters. The killing of Gina
as she exits her car in front of the Lennox home eliminates her as a suspect and
complicates Tamara’s theory of the case.

After she considers the three elements of
solving a murder—motive, method, and opportunity—Tamara focuses on opportunity.
About a fourth of the way into the novel, I guessed who was the killer and the
motive. I continued reading because I wanted to see how Tamara would break the
seemingly airtight alibi of the person she believed killed Shawn.

About Me

Former occupation: Federal government employee.
Education: Master’s Degree in English Literature from University of Tennessee.
Activities: Reading and writing, and maintaining this blog.
Greatest disappointment: the knowledge that I’ll not be able to read all of the books I want to read.
Ambition (yes, a senior citizen can still have ambitions): to read as many of them as I can before going to the Great Library.
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